Mesa's Southwest Shakespeare Company Announces 2010-11 Season

The Southwest Shakespeare Company has announced their 2010-2011 season. The season will include four Shakespeare plays as well as a production of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

The season begins with Shakespeare's WAR OF THE ROSES, opening September 9th to September 25th at the Nesbitt/Elliott Playhouse. The War of the Roses is a phrase used to describe the civil wars in England between the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties. Some of the events of these wars were dramatized by Shakespeare in the history plays Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; Henry V; Henry VI, Part 1; Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; and Richard III.

Up next is the Shakespearian comedy TWELFTH NIGHT from November 27th to December 18th at the Anita Cox Farnsworth Studio Theater. TWELFTH NIGHT toys with the intersection of power and love through a tale of noble twins separated in a shipwreck. Watch as Viola and Sebastian manage to find each other against all odds, but not before thoroughly confusing those who befriend them. Add the richly idiosyncratic members of Lady Olivia's household and the havoc they wreak on her puritanical, narcissistic steward, Malvolio - one of the tastiest antagonists in Shakespeare's canon - and you have the recipe for a delicious evening of comedy.

From January 6th to January 22nd, the Virginia G. Piper Repertory Theatre will host A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. An exhilarating night of midsummer madness, this magical comedy brims with mistaken identity, mismatched lovers and mischief-making fairies. Boldly inspired by the marvelously mod influences of a rock ‘n' roll infused 1960s London, this production of Shakespeare's comic masterpiece ensnares two pairs of lovers and a rustic troupe of would-be actors in a magical-mystery tour de force. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a joyful celebration of love lost, transformed and restored that casts a powerfully pleasing spell on audiences of all ages.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde will run March 3rd to March 19th at the Anita Cox Farnsworth Studio Theatre. Jack Worthing has invented a brother, Ernest, whom he uses as an excuse to leave his humdrum country life behind to visit the ravishing Gwendolen, cousin of his best friend Algernon Montcrieff. But Algernon, who also knows Jack as Ernest, catches on all too quickly that Jack earnestly isn't Ernest. So Algernon decides to take the name Ernest when he visits the Worthing country manor where he meets Jack's ward, the sweet and lovely Cecily who has spent so much time worrying about her poor caregiver's wretched brother Ernest that she's grown rather fond of the man she hasn't met - until now.

Closing out the season is Shakespeare's ANTHONY AND CLEOPATRA from April 14th to April 30th at the Nesbitt/Elliott Playhouse. The play is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony's fellow triumviri and the future first emperor of Rome. The tragedy is a Roman play characterized by swift, panoramic shifts in geographical locations and in registers, alternating between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and the more pragmatic, austere Rome.

Co-founded in 1994 by educators/actors and Shakespeare aficionados, Kevin Dressler and Randy Messersmith, Southwest Shakespeare ("SSC") has always emphasized education and making Shakespeare understandable to the masses.

For the first 11 seasons, SSC performed the fall and spring shows in the outdoor Mesa Amphitheatre and the winter show indoors at either Mountain View or Westwood High School. The 2005-06 season opened at the new Mesa Arts Center, a $94.5 million facility located in downtown Mesa. Under Jared Sakren's leadership, SSC expanded its season and performed a total of five shows in two of its four theaters (the 550-seat Virginia G. Piper Repertory Theater and the 99-seat Anita Cox Farnsworth Studio Theater).

For more information, visit www.swshakespeare.org.

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